*I am posting this on behalf of Wincer.  Please take note of the new policy*

Due to the abuse of many features of the site, APSense is adopting a new spam policy.  You may have noticed that there is a 'Report Abuse' button now placed on every comment throughout the site.  All Spam/Abusive comments may be reported by ANY member on ANY post.  What this means it that if you post a spam/abusive comment on any blog post, it will not just sit there until the author of that blog can get back and delete is as has been the case in the past.  It can be immediately reported by any member who sees it.  Report abuse button is for reporting abuse/spam in comments and messages.

Guidelines for Reporting Spam

Spam comments are:

Gibberish posts-posts that are nothing but punctuation marks or collections of random letters are spam posts

Unrelated to topic-comments that have nothing to do with the subject matter are spam posts

Sales/Referrals comments-comments that are meant to advertise products or programs of the person posting the comment are spam comments

One word comments-comments of one word are not comments they are spam posts

Plagiarism-Copying and pasting any portion of an existing post or comment and then posting it as your comment is a spam post.

Handling of abuse reports

All abuse reports will be checked and confirmed.  Members are not allowed to go over a certain number of abuse reports.  Exceeding that number will get your account terminated.

Each incident is an individual report.  If you place a spam comment you will be reported by multiple members.  However if seven people report you for the same comment it will only count as one report.  If you are reported for seven different comments, that is seven abuse reports.

No we are not going to tell you how many reports will get your account terminated.  If you are smart you will assume it is one.  We will begin tracking reports on Monday October 18^th 2010.

Benefits of Spam Reporting

APSense works best when we can use the provided features as they are meant to be used.  Unfortunately spammers abuse many features and they must be limited to reduce the spam.  Then we all lose out.

Spammers ruin the reputation of a site.  Many sites are considered nothing but spam farms and no one except spammers want to be involved with them.  Apsense has a good reputation of NOT being a spam farm.  It is in everyone?s best interest for APSense reputation to remain above reproach.

APSense can attract quality members.  Sites with little to no spam attract quality members.  That means higher quality opportunities and contacts for our members.

*This Blog was edited on October 22, 2010 to include Plagiarism as spam posting.